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[B. Oliver Sheppard]

I agree with you about Nietzsche and the Nazis having way less in common 
than popular culture often makes one think. In fact, Nietzsche was 
ardently against German nationalism and hated anti-Semites. He refused 
to attend his sister's wedding, in fact, because she was marrying an 
anti-Semite.

He was misogynistic and voiced some other unsavory opinions, however. 
But he was not proto-fascist. Georges Bataille wrote a great essay in 
the 1930s called something like "Nietzsche and the Nazis" that does a 
great job of rescuing Nietzsche from the Nazis' clutches.

The reputation Nietzsche has as proto-Nazi largely comes from his 
sister, who survived him and inherited his papers, books, etc. As I 
mentioned, she married a famous anti-Semite of the day. She lived long 
enough to see Hitler come to power and gave Hitler the gift of 
Nietzsche's walking cane. Hitler also posed next to a bust of Nietzsche. 
Nietzsche's sister loved this. She also cobbled together (and possibly 
ghost wrote large sections of) Nietzsche's posthumous "book" _Will to 
Power_. It's largely thanks to her he's as associated with Nazism as he is.

Nietzche was also not exactly some feminist humanist, either, though. He 
changed his opinions a lot, was contradictory, inconsistent, 
intentionally inflammatory and provocative, etc. However, there are 
"left-Nietzscheans" (like Bataille, Foucault, and others) and right-wing 
Nietzscheans (like Leo Strauss and folks involved with early fascism who 
thought they were Nietzsche-influenced). He's hard to peg on a 
left-right spectrum.

-Oliver


Brendan wrote:

> Nietzsche would have puked at the thought of the Nazis using what he

> wrote, which isn't to defend him totally, he was definitely misogynistic

> and a few other things (so was most of the country at the time), but

> saying he was an inspiration for the Nazis is about as accurate as saying

> that the Beatles were an inspiration for Charles Manson. It was a one way

> street...some nutters take inspiration from what they will, doesn't mean

> there's anything inherently evil in it in the first place.

>

> Comparing KJ to the Nazis is plain thick. Comparing them to Nietzsche is

> in some ways valid. Jaz amusingly points out that he lost interest in

> Nietzsche when he found out that he lived with his Mum =)

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